Hammer & Tongs and Radiohead and Vampire Weekend

If you must know, producer Nick Goldsmith and writer-director Garth Jennings are both in their mid-30s. But you can’t tell judging from their body of work, which runs from whimsical music videos and childlike films to childlike music videos and whimsical films. Maybe it’s because they’re British. Or maybe it’s because they don’t like the thought of growing up.

“We like whimsy. I don’t think it’s necessarily a British thing, it’s probably a Hammer and Tongs thing,” says Goldsmith, who with Goldsmith comprise H&T.

Hammer & Tongs is both their nom de guerre and their production company, which has less to do with blacksmithing than unhinged inventive force. Over the years they’ve made videos for Beck, R.E.M., Fatboy Slim and Blur, whose Coffee and TV starred a toddling milk carton with an expressive face and a good sense of rhythm. For their feature-film debut, they took whimsy to the wide screen for a brilliantly odd 2005 adaptation of Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Lately they’ve done quirked-out bits for Radiohead and Vampire Weekend.

They do not, they say, make much of a distinction between their films and their videos.

“We’re not motivated by budget as much as just a love of the thing we’re doing,” Jennings says. “Either it’s a band or song we adore, or a script we feel absolutely passionately about. Even though we have fun doing it, it’s very hard work, but it’s much harder if we’re doing it for something we don’t like.”

If Son of Rambow is any indication. Written and directed by Jennings, produced by Goldsmith and starring a pair of natural, scruff-topped newcomers, Rambow tells the tale of two English boys – the scrapper Lee and the quiet, artistic Will, a member of an austere Christian sect – who sneak off to shoot their own sequel to First Blood. It’s set in the early 1980s, a time of Depeche Mode and styling mousse. And it captures perfectly both the ingenuity of youth and the secret worlds formed by children when grown-ups are nowhere near: It’s wee, boyish, with a big imagination and an even bigger heart.

Besides Son of Rambow and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Hammer & Tongs have made some really cool videos for some pretty cool bands. A couple of note are Radiohead’s Jigsaw Falling Into Place from In Rainbows, Blur’s Coffee and TV and Vampire Weekend’s A-Punk. Coincidentally, Radiohead will play a show at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion on Saturday.